As has been noted here, Pope Benedict XVI yesterday named Archbishop William Levada of San Francisco to replace the Pope himself as head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the successor to the Holy Office, aka the Inquisition. What kind of man is the prelate the press is already attempting to portray as a new Torquemada?

Earlier this year, as it happens, I saw Archbishop Levada in action when he celebrated the fiftieth anniversary mass at St. Raymond’s parochial school in Menlo Park, California, the school four Robinson children attend. “By the authority invested in me by the Holy See,” the archbishop intoned at the end of the mass, as if about to call down lightning bolts, “I hereby declare…a day off from school.”

The couple of hundred children in the congregation gave Torquemada a cheer.